This 172 page full color softcover work by Rutu Modan, a founding member of the Israeli comics group, Actus Tragicus, is a real graphic novel.  Populated by fully fleshed out characters and beautifully rendered in a personal style that is clean, colorful and capable of conveying the full depth of the strong script which expresses the complexities and nuances that we expect from something called a novel, Exit Wounds is a book you'll be likely to read more than once.  Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde) calls Exit Wounds "a profound, richly textured, humane, and unsentimental look at societal malaise and human relationships and that uneasy place where they sometimes intersect."

The author of Exit Wounds returns with this collection of all her extant short work.  While the execution of the material ranges from early work rendered entirely in pencil to her current "paperless" work that is rendered entirely electronically using a Wacom™ tablet and Photoshop™, the material all connects in one way or another with Israael and the Jewish experience. Get a taste, here. 

An all new, full color, hardcover graphic novel from the foremost Israeli practitioner of the form.  This time around Ms. Modan delves into history through a trip to the "old country", in this case Warsaw, Poland, where an elderly woman and her granddaughter try to reclaim family property lost during World War II.  A clash of both generations and cultures ensues.

The mysteries of the ancient past intersect with the complexities of the present day in this tour de force graphic novel from Israeli cartoonist and educator, Rutu Modan.  Fact, fiction, myth, history, politics, religion, sexualities and rivalries both sibling and professional all mix it up in the 284 full color pages of Tunnels.  This quite aptly titled work demonstrates how we are all moving through our own tunnels that extend before, through and after our own lives and that these tunnels run in parallel, over, under and across the tunnels of others in one vast network the entirety of which no single participant can hope to grasp.  That the physical tunnels in which the action plays out here move under and across the border between Israel and the Palestinian Territories makes all that transpires that much more fraught.  An engrossing and entertaining – not to mention educational – read.

Translated from the Hebrew by Ishai Mishory.  Hardcover.

RECOMMENDED